Indica Labs, Octo, and Axle Work with NIH to Launch a Global COVID-19 Digital Pathology Repository

22 May 2020 - - US-based computational pathology software provider Indica Labs and Octo, an information technology systems provider to the US Federal government, have created the online COVID Digital Pathology Repository (COVID-DPR), a virtual collection of high resolution microscopic COVID-related human tissue images hosted at the National Institutes of Health, the organisations said.

While the number of COVID-19-related deaths continues to rise worldwide, only a few organizations are equipped with the viral containment facilities to perform autopsies and collect tissues from patients who succumb to the disease.

These tissues are critical for researchers who are investigating the pathology, treatment, and prevention of COVID-19 infection. COVID-DPR was created to enable international collaboration by providing a centralised, cloud-based repository for sharing and annotating digital whole slide images of lung, liver, kidney, and heart tissues from patients infected with COVID-19, as well as the closely related coronaviruses associated with SARs and MERs.

The whole slide images, annotations, and metadata in the repository will be used as a reference dataset for education, research, and future clinical trials aimed at limiting further infection, disease, and death.

Susan Gregurick, NIH Associate director for Data Science and director of the Office of Data Science Strategy, is coordinating NIH's computational efforts to combat the disease.

Octo has supported NIH with software and systems development for the last decade, including NIH's first blockchain program.

The current initiative involves multiple institutes within NIH, and COVID-DPR will be available immediately as a shared resource for researchers at institutes around the world with initial datasets being provided by infectious disease labs across North America, Europe, and Australia.